The Snowshoe Trail

  IV

  It was one of the decrees of the forest gods that no human being shallride for five miles through the spruce forests of the Selkirks and failto glean at least some slight degree of wilderness knowledge. BothVirginia and Lounsbury had been on horseback before. Virginia hadridden in the parks of her native city: long ago and far away abarefoot, ragged boy--much to be preferred to the smug and petulantman who now tried to hard to forget those humble days--had bestrode anold plow horse nightly on the way to a watering trough. But this ridinghad qualities all its own. There was no open road winding before them.Nor was there any trail,--in general or particular.

  It was true that the moose had passed that way, leaving their greatfootprints in the dying grass. They had chosen the easiest pathway overthe hills, and Bill was enough of a woodsman to follow where they led.Traversing the Clearwater was simply a matter of knowing the country andgoing in a general direction. Almost at once the evergreen thicketsclosed around them.

  Virginia found that safety depended upon constant watchfulness. Theevergreen branches struck cruel blows at her face, the spruce needlescut like knives. Sometimes the horse in front would bend down a youngtree, permitting it to whip back with a deadly blow; she had to watchher knees in the narrow passages between the trunks; and the vinesreached and caught at her. Sometimes the long-hanging limbs of theyoung trees made an impassable barrier, and more than once she wasnearly dragged from the saddle. Shortly they came to the first fallenlog.

  Mulvaney, Bill's horse, took it lightly; and the man turned to watch thegirl. Her horse stepped gingerly, making it without trouble. Then theguide saw fit to give her a little good advice.

  "Kick Buster in the ribs just before you come to a log," he said."He'll jump 'em then. It's a whole lot safer--if he tries to stepover 'em he's apt to get his foot caught and give you a bad fall."

  Virginia looked up coldly. She wasn't accustomed to being spoken to inquite this tone of voice, particularly by an employee. But she saw hissober eyes and immediately forgot her resentment. And she found anactual delight in bounding over the next obstruction.

  "And there's one more thing," the guide went on. "I've ridden plenty ofhorses, and I've found there's only one way to handle 'em. I'm going totry a new way to-day, because there's a lady in the party. But if I'mtried too heavy----"

  "Go ahead," the girl replied, smiling. "I suppose you mean--toswear."

  "Not just to swear. Call names. These horses won't think we're presentif we don't swear at 'em. And the only name they know refers to them isone that casts slurs upon their ancestry, but I'll try to avoid itto-day. I suppose I can make a roaring sound that sounds enough like itto fool the horses."

  Virginia was naturally alert and quick-witted, and she needed both ofthese traits now. The guide helped her all he could, warning her ofapproaching thickets; yet the first hour was a grim initiation to thewoods. Lounsbury was having even a more difficult time. He was afraidof his horse, to start with--and this is never an auspiciousbeginning. A frightened rider means a nervous, excited animal--andnervousness and excitement are unhealthy qualities in the Selkirks.Neither put trust in the other, and Lounsbury's cruel, lashing blowswith the long bridle ends only made matters worse. The horse leaped andplunged, slipped badly on the hills, progressed awkwardly over thefallen logs, and flew into wild panic when he came to the quagmires.The man's temper fell far below the danger point in the first hour, andhe was savage and desperate before half of the afternoon's ride wasdone.

  The thickets were merciless. They knew him, those silent evergreens:they gave no welcome to his breed; and it seemed to him they found ahundred ways to plague him. Their needles scratched his face, theirbranches whipped into his eyes, the limbs dealt cruel blows at his sideand the tree trunks wrenched at his knees. Worse still, they soon cameto a hill that Bill advised they take on foot.

  "Not me," Lounsbury shrilled. "I'll swear I won't walk any hills.You've provided a vicious horse for me, and I'm going to ride himup if it kills him. I didn't come out here to break my wind onmountains--and this horse needs the devil taken out of him, anyway."

  It was in Virginia's mind that none of the emphatic but genial oathsthat Bill had let slip from time to time grated on her half so much asthis frenzied complaint of her companion, but she kept her thoughts toherself. But Bill turned with something dangerously like a smile.

  "Suit yourself, of course," he replied. "I'm not asking you to walk upto spare your horse. Only, from time to time a horse makes a misstep onthis hill--just one little slip--and spins down in backwardsomersets a thousand feet. If you want to try it, of course it's allright with me."

  He swung off his horse, took the bridle reins of both his own animal andVirginia's, and started the long climb. And it was to be noticed thatat the first steep pitch Lounsbury found that he was tired of riding andfollowed after meekly, but with wretched spirit.

  They stopped often to rest; and from the heights Virginia got her firstreal glimpse of Clearwater. Her first impression was simply vast andunmeasured amazement at the dimensions of the land. As far as she couldsee lay valley after valley, range upon range, great forests of sprucealternating with open glades, dim unnamed lakes glinting pale blue inthe afternoon sun, whole valleys where the foot of white man had nevertrod. She felt somewhat awed, scarcely knowing why.

  Rivers gleamed, marshes lay yellow and somber in the sun, the darkforests stretched until the eyes tired; but nowhere were there anyhomes, any villages or pastures, not a blaze upon a tree, not the smokeof a camp fire. Bradleyburg was already obliterated and lost in thedepths of the woodland. The silence was incredible,--as vast andinfinite as the wilderness itself. It startled her a little, when theypaused in their climb, to hear the pronounced tick of her wrist watch,even the whisper of her own breath. It was as if she had gone to anenchanted land, a place that lay in a great sleep that began in theworld's young days, and from which the last reaches of time it couldnever waken.

  Bill, standing just above her, pointed to a dash of golden across thecanyon. "That's quivering asp," he told her, "turned by the frost. Itseems good to see a bit of color in this world of dark woods. It's justlike a flash of sunshine in a storm."

  She listened with some surprise. The same detail had held her gaze, thesame thought--almost the same simile--had come into her mind; butshe had hardly expected to find a love of the beautiful in this bronzedforester. In fact, she found that a number of her preconceived ideaswere being turned topsy-turvy.

  Heretofore, it seemed to her, her thought had always dwelt on thesuperficialities rather than the realities of life. Her income waspitifully small according to her standards, yet she had never had toconsider the question of food and shelter. She had known socialsuccess, love of beauty and of art, gayety and luxury; she had had pettydiscouragements and triumphs, worries and fears, but of the simple andprimitive basis of things she took no cognizance. She had never dealtwith essentials. They had always seemed outside her life.

  Virginia had never lived in the shadow of Fear,--that greatest andmost potent of realities. In truth she didn't know the meaning of theword. She had been afraid in her bed at night, she had beenapprehensive of a block's walk in the twilight, but Fear--in its truesense--was an alien and a stranger. She had never met him in thewaste places, seen him skulking on her trail through the winter snows,listened to his voice in the wind's wail. She didn't know the fear ofwhich the coyotes sang from this hill, the blind and groping dread of animmutable destiny, the ghastly realization of impotence against a crueland omnipotent fate. She hadn't ever learned about it. Living aprotected life she didn't know that it existed. Food and shelter andwarmth and safety had always seemed her birthright; about her housemarched the officers of the law protecting her from evildoers; she livedin sight of great hospitals that would open their doors to the sick andinjured and of charitable institutions that would clothe and feed theneedy: thus the world had kept its bitter truths from her. But she wasb
eginning to learn them now. She was having her first glimpse of life,life stripped of all delusion, stark and naked, the relentless realitythat it was.

  Fear was no stranger to these forests. Its presence, in every turn ofthe trail, filled her with awe. A single misstep, a little instant ofhesitation in a crisis, might precipitate her a thousand feet down thecanyon to her death. Dead trees swayed, threatening to fall; snowslides roared and rumbled on the far steeps; the quagmire sucked withgreedy lips, the trail wandered dimly,--as if it were trying to decoyher away into the fastnesses where the wilderness might claim her. Noone had to tell her how easy it would be to lose the trail, never tofind it again. The forests were endless; there were none to hear awanderer's cry for help. Wet matches, an accident to the food supplies,a few nights without shelter in the dismal forest,--any of these mightspell complete and irrevocable disaster.

  What had she known of Death? It was a thing to claim old people,sometimes to take even her young friends from their games among theflowers, but never had it been an acquaintance to hers. It was aswholly apart from her as the beings of another planet. But here she hadcome to the home of Death,--cold and fearful obliteration dwelling inevery thicket. She found herself wondering about it, now, and dreadingit with a new dread that she had never dreamed of before. The only realemotions she had ever known were her love for Harold Lounsbury and hergrief at his absence: in these autumn woods she might easily learn allthe others. She had never known true loneliness; here, except for herfiance's uncle with whom she had never felt on common ground and twopaid employees--the latter, she told herself, did not count--she wasas much alone as if she had been cast upon an uninhabited sphere.Already she knew something of the great malevolence that is the eternaltone of the wilderness, the lurking peril that is the North.

  This new view influenced her attitude toward Bill. At first she hadfelt no interest in him whatever. Of a class that does not enter into abasis of equality with personal employees, to her he had seemed in thesame category with a new house servant or chauffeur. He had been hiredto do her service; he was either a bad servant or a good one, and fromher he would receive kindness and patronage, but never real feeling orfriendship, never more than an impersonal interest. But now that sheknew something of the real nature of this expedition, affairs had takena new turn. She suddenly realized that her whole happiness, hercomfort, perhaps even life itself depended upon him. He was theirprotector, their source of supplies, their refuge and their strength aswell.

  The change did not mean that she was willing to enter upon a basis ofcomradeship with him--yet. But she did find a singular satisfactionin the mere fact of his presence. Here was one who could build a firein the snow if need be, whose strong arms could cut fuel, who couldmanage the horses and bring them safe to the journey's end. His rifleswung in his saddle scabbard, his pistol belt encircled his waist; heknew how to adjust the packs, to peg the tent fast in a storm, to findbread and meat in the wilderness. She began to notice his lithe, strongfigure as he sat in his saddle, the ease with which he controlled hishorse and avoided the pitfalls in the trail. When the moose tracks weretoo dim for her eyes to see, he followed them with ease. When thehorses bolted from some unfamiliar smell in the thicket, he was quick toround them up. The animals were swift in obedience when he spoke tothem, but they were only terrified by Lounsbury's shrill shouts. He wascool of nerve, self-possessed, wholly self-reliant. She listened withan eager gladness to his soft whistling: simple classics that sheherself loved but which came strangely from the lips of this son of theforest.

  His eyes were bright and music was in his heart,--in spite of the darkmenace of these northern woodlands. He was not afraid: rather he seemedto be getting a keen enjoyment out of the afternoon's ride. And thegreat truth suddenly came to her that in his strength lay hers, that shehad entrusted her welfare to him and for the present, at least, it wassecure. And she put her own cares away.

  She would not have admitted that she had simply followed the example ofthe uncounted millions of women that had preceded her through the longreaches of the centuries that had found strength and peace in theshelter of a strong man's arm. She only knew that her mind no longerdwelt on danger, but it had marvelously opened to receive the image ofthe grim but ineffable beauty of this wild land through which she rode.She felt secure, and she began to have an intangible but ever-increasingdelight in the wonderland about her.

  * * * * *

  Her first impression of the wilderness was that of a far-stretchingdesert, forgotten and desolate and unpeopled as the fiery stars.Likewise this was Lounsbury's view, as in the case of every tenderfootwho had preceded him, but Lounsbury would likely grow old and perishwithout discovering his mistake. Clear eyes are needed to read thesecrets of the wild: the dark glass through which he gazed at the worldhad never cleared. Vosper had lived months and years in the North, buthe had only hatred in his heart of these waste places and thus receivedno glory from them. But Virginia soon found out the truth.

  "There's an old bull been along here not twenty minutes ago," Bill toldher after they reached the hilltop. "The mud hasn't begun to dry in histracks."

  "An old bull?" she repeated. "Do cattle run here----?"

  "Good Lord, there isn't a cow this side of the shipping point. I mean abull moose. And he's a lunker, too. Maybe we'll catch a glimpse ofhim."

  In her time she had talked enough to big-game hunters to haveconsiderable respect for the moose, the largest of all deer tribe, andshe thrilled a little at the thought that she was in his own range. Shedidn't get a sight of the great creature, but she began to pay moreattention to the trail. Seeing her interest the guide began to read toher the message in the tracks,--how here a pair of otters had racedalong in the dawn, stopping at intervals to slide; how a cow caribou andcalf had preceded them at midday; how a coyote had come skulking theprevious night. Beside a marsh he showed her the grim evidence of awilderness tragedy,--the skeleton and feathers of a goose that astalking wolf had taken by surprise. And once he showed her a greattear in the bark of a tree, nearly as high as she could reach onhorseback.

  "What is it?" she inquired.

  "That's the sign that the lord of the manor has been along. MissTremont, did you ever hear of an animal called the grizzly bear?"

  "Good heavens! A bear couldn't reach that high----"

  "Couldn't? Some of these bears could scoop the man out of the moon!"

  He showed her gray, crinkling hairs that had caught in the bark,explaining that mysterious wilderness custom of the grizzly of measuringhis length on the tree trunks and leaving a mark, as high as he canbite, for all to see. According to many naturalists any bear thatcannot bite an equal height immediately seeks a new range, leaving thedistrict to the larger bear. But Bill confessed that he took the legendwith a grain of salt. "I've seen too many bear families running aroundthe woods together," he explained. "Pa bears, ma bears, and baby bears,all different sizes."

  Virginia noticed that he spoke with great respect for that huge forestking, the grizzly; but she needn't have wondered. The great creaturewas worthy of it.

  Perhaps the most intelligent wild animal that roams the Americancontinent--on the same intellectual plane with the dog andelephant--he was also the most terrible. The truth has been almostestablished among the big-game hunters that wild animals, with fewexceptions, even when wounded practically never charge or attack thehunter. But his imperial majesty, the grizzly, was first on the listof exceptions. He couldn't be entirely trusted. His terrible strength,his ferocity, most of all his courage won him a wide berth through thismountain land.

  She began to catch glimpses of bird life,--saucy jays andglorious-colored magpies and grossbeaks. She cried out in delight whena pine squirrel scampered up a little tree just over her head, pausingto look down at these strange forms that had disturbed the cathedralsilence of the tree aisles. And all at once Bill drew up his horses.

  "Miss Tremont, do you like chicken?" he asked.
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  She was somewhat startled by the abrupt question, and her horse nosedMulvaney's flanks before she drew him to a halt. It occurred to herthat such a query scarcely came under the title of small talk, and shefound some difficulty in shaping her answer. "Why yes," she agreed."I'm very fond of chicken."

  "It's pretty good, boiled with rice," the man went on gravely. "We'llhave some for supper."

  Virginia stared at him in blank amazement as he slipped down from thesaddle and drew his automatic, small-calibered pistol from the holster.He stole forward into the flaking shadows of late afternoon, and at oncethe brush obscured him. Then he shot,--four times in succession.

  She was wholly unable to guess what manner of target he had. Chickenswere one thing that she found it hard to believe ranged in thesenorthern woods. She felt certain that he had missed the first threeshots, but she waited with considerable interest the result of thefourth. And soon he pushed through the thickets to her side.

  In his hand he held a queer, gray, shapeless bundle that at first shecould not recognize. Then she saw that they were gray grouse, almostthe color of a Plymouth Rock hen, and there was not one, but four! Hestarted to stuff them into his saddlebag. "Pretty lucky that time," heexplained. "Got 'em through the neck. That leaves the meat clean----"

  He seemed wholly matter-of-fact about the incident, but Virginiacontinued to stare at him in open-mouthed astonishment. "Four of them?"she cried.

  "One apiece. There was five in the flock, but the other looked like atough old hen. But don't look so amazed, Miss Tremont. They are foolhens--Franklin's grouse--and that means that they'll set all day andlet you pepper at 'em. And with a little practice it's easy to get themin the neck pretty near every time."

  He swung into the saddle, and they started forth upon the last hour oftheir day's journey. And Vosper made the only remark worth recording.

  "When I was in Saskatchewan last year," he began in a thin, far-carryingvoice, "I must 'a shot a thousand grouse and didn't miss one."

  Virginia felt that she'd like to go back and shake him.